Cops and Wizards
by RoseFrederick
Summary: Kate Beckett had hoped her problems with wizards, both aurors and murderers, were over and done with. Unfortunately for her, the last case had been just the beginning. Sequel fic.
1. Chapter 1

**Cops and Wizards**

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Internal Summary/Disclaimer: After the events of _If You Don't Believe, It Might Still Find You, _the NYAO wizards find themselves in the middle of another mysterious murder and call in their new experts. While the successful resolution of their last case has gained more access to the wizarding world for Beckett's team, trying to solve a case where a lot of modern techniques just don't work remains a challenge. Again, I don't claim any ownership of Castle or Harry Potter.

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Chapter One: Rick Castle and the Second Call

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Rick Castle had been just a tiny bit dissatisfied that their first contact with the mysterious world of magic and wizards had ended in a fairly quick resolution with a relatively mundane motive. Not that he wasn't happy to stop a serial murderer, and of course passion was always one of the classics, along with greed and politics. He knew that better than anyone. Still – magic! Shouldn't that add some new variables and twists of its own? There had been excitement and fun because, well, _magic_!

Yet as much as Rick found both magic and the three representatives they'd worked with utterly fascinating, it had been frustrating that his team - well, Beckett's team - had been largely excluded from the magical portion of the investigation. So as much of a show as he made of being disappointed it was over to annoy Beckett, he wasn't really all that sorry to see them go.

Which was not to say that he wasn't interested when they called Beckett up again asking for help on another of their cases! Call him an optimist, but he didn't think it was so wildly improbable to hope they might actually get to see further into that world this time around. In fact, the call to Beckett resolved with plans for their team to be escorted to the NYAO's offices for this new case. Sure, offices weren't that exciting normally, but it was a _wizard office_! Not even to mention that he still wanted to know what the auror's story was. Every time anyone had brought up their origins in England, or the prejudices of wizards, all three of their new friends had gotten quiet and tense. He was pretty sure it also had to do with that dark wizard they'd mentioned, Vold-something. He had just enough pieces to be sure the rest of the story had to be pretty juicy.

The downside, of course, was that Beckett was supremely unhappy to be called back. She'd really hated that last case and all the roadblocks to her usual methods of investigation, and even if he hadn't been as good at reading her as he was, it was clear she was very displeased at the prospect of putting up with all that again. It took a good long chat in Montgomery's office after the phone call ended to bring the detective around to the conclusion that this was something they ought to do. Castle hadn't been invited in, but he suspected there had been a great deal of cajoling about how cooperation between departments maintained good relations with everybody and perhaps ended with a nudge about how unfortunate it would be if a murderer went free just because assisting on this case would be a hassle. In fact, he played a whole imaginary version of the conversation out in his head while he waited for Beckett.

He tried not to act too excited when she came back out, her expression showing she'd given in. The effort was in vain as his pretense clearly wasn't doing anything to fool Beckett. She rolled her eyes at him and told him to go home not too long after exiting Montgomery's office. The team had been finishing paperwork on a previous case, and though he didn't generally stick around for the desk work part of the job, he hadn't gotten around to leaving the precinct quite yet when the call came in.

Castle couldn't say he was completely certain he understood what Beckett was thinking or feeling about him at any given time, but he was pretty sure that a lot of her annoyance with him was feigned. Otherwise she'd have asked him to leave years ago, right? Still, if this case got her even half as irritated as the last one had, perhaps he was better off going home and letting her have the rest of the afternoon to herself. Give her some extra time to build up her tolerance levels before she had to deal with him and magic together again. He was sure she hadn't wanted him to know, but he'd noticed she'd been extra vigilant going over crime scenes lately, looking for anything magical now they all knew there was a whole other world out there. It was part of what made her such a good detective, but he was a bit disappointed that magic seemed to be little more than another way to kill people to Kate Beckett.

On the plus side, he had gotten some more ideas for the latest Nikki Heat since the last magically-linked case. Which wasn't to say that the idea of writing about magic was any less tempting than it had been. Aside from a few vague sketches he'd outlined, though, he simply didn't have enough knowledge of the wizarding world to write about it, and making up something wholesale without any research just wasn't his style. Between that realization and a particularly interesting case they'd had involving a group of college cheerleaders last week, his high-tech home murder board was full of juicy details for his next book and the writing of it was coming along pretty well. Getting some hours of writing in today would be a good thing, even if he wasn't officially behind yet.

Of course, part of the reason he'd been loitering around the precinct was because the loft would be empty - both his mother and Alexis had big plans for their evenings. Martha had some theater event to attend and would likely be out all night, while his daughter was at a sleepover birthday party. He hadn't wanted to spend the evening home alone. Now, it was kind of a good thing. They knew him too well not to notice how excited he got about certain cases, and since he normally shared details, it would be easier to avoid blurting out anything about the fact that tomorrow would be spent with wizards if his family weren't around. Not that he would, he'd managed to keep the last case a mystery, but the secret was still a hard one to keep. Although the fact that wizards were such an insular bunch and had sounded very serious about enforcing their secrecy laws did help some. Also, even knowing about magic now he still hadn't seen much of it, and that left less to get excited about. Which was just a real let down. Hopefully tomorrow that would start to change!

The next morning, Castle was up and at the precinct bright and early with Beckett's coffee in eagerness for their meeting with Potter. A little too early, perhaps, considering that Beckett's mood was just as bad as he'd expected it might be. The plainly unamused look on her face he could see stepping off the elevator left him spending the time waiting with Esposito and Ryan at their desk instead of in the usual spot by his detective's side.

When he arrived the boys were well into a heated discussion about the relative merits of a couple of the newest video games, so he was perfectly happy to join right in. It was all in good fun until a loud exchange about the costume on a particular character lead to Beckett making a crack about them being such a bunch of girls. After that, they moved things to the break room for a little while so she couldn't make fun. Beckett just didn't understand the importance of some things.

Potter finally made an appearance coming out of the elevator about two hours later, and the team began shutting down what they were doing (even if they were being temporarily reassigned for the next few days there was always paperwork, it seemed) and gathering up their coats to leave. The wizard greeted them cordially enough, and directed them all to get on the elevator. Once inside he produced a long, thin woman's scarf from one of his pockets which he directed them to take hold of. Castle immediately reached out, but the detectives all exchanged glances at the oddness of this first, before doing as they were asked.

Once they all had a grip on the material, the man muttered, "3...2...1...now" which had an immediate effect. It was a bizarre feeling that came over him then - it was as if someone had stuck a hook in his gut and jerked hard on it. The sensation wasn't quite painful but it was definitely unpleasant. It was also a bit of a shock to look up after searching for a physical cause for the pain and realize they were in a different place altogether. In the middle of being bemused by the change of location, he was knocked off his feet. Potter was still standing, but the rest of them had hit the floor from the disorientation of travel. Luckily they had more space around them than they'd begun with in the elevator.

Potter said, "Welcome to the New York Auror's Office," as they all picked themselves up off the floor. He was only smiling a little bit at their awkwardness.

"What the heck _was_ that? And why did it look like a ladies' scarf?" Ryan asked.

"That was a portkey. They're pretty hard to create for the average wizard and are usually monitored closely, so they aren't used very often aside from big events and unusual circumstances. We just recently got a special dispensation for using them with our non-magical specialists, which has made things much easier on us. Not a lot of magical travel is muggle group-friendly. "

Since the office they were in was not too much different from any other office at first glance, even if it was a magic office, Castle felt his interest captured by what Potter had said. "What kind of big events?"

Harry motioned for them to follow him while he answered the question. "Oh, major sporting events, the occasional international conference, that sort of thing. Once we get business taken care of maybe I can get permission to take you out to a quidditch game – or quodpot, if it's all that's on offer. American wizards generally prefer quodpot, but for me it's just not the same."

"Those are sports, I'm guessing?" Esposito asked, sounding dubious.

"Played on broomsticks," the auror confirmed with a grin.

"Dude, seriously?" Potter just laughed at Esposito's disbelief.

As this conversation was taking place, they were walking through a fairly open area with cubicles – again, not unlike any regular office, except the desks lacked computers or any other evidence of modern technology. Aside from a few weirdly animate pieces of paper zooming by on their way somewhere else, the room contained nothing more interesting than a bunch of people writing reports – though to be fair they were dressed in robes. Castle was starting to worry that maybe they still wouldn't get to see any more of this overtly magical world than an office building, but wasn't about to let that dampen his enthusiasm quite yet. Finally, Potter led them into a side room, where Granger and Weasley were sitting at a table, waiting for them to arrive.

As the group of them took their seats around the table, Potter was given a sheaf of folders from Granger, which he then proceeded to hand out to each of them. Castle of course immediately flipped his open, and was astonished by the picture just inside.

The victim was a girl who looked a bit younger than Potter and his friends did, lying face down with a knife handle protruding from her back on the floor of what appeared to be a pet shop. That wasn't so extraordinary. The part that made it truly intriguing was how the animals in the cages on the wall behind the girl were visibly moving, most notably a big fluffy cat pacing back and forth immediately behind her head. There were further shots of the scene from different angles and they were just as fascinatingly mobile. Wizards might be less exciting than they had first seemed with their exclusionary way of life, but magic was still _so_ cool.

Castle noticed that there were other papers in the folder – actually, the documents were more like parchment, even if they were typed – but by the time he had managed to pull his eyes away from the spectacle of the moving photos to start looking over them, Beckett had spoken up. "Why don't you go ahead and give us an overview?"

Granger was the one who took up the challenge. "Sara Klein was an assistant working at Wondrous Animals, the biggest magical pet store on Lumos Avenue – that's New York's magical shopping district. The owner worked with her through yesterday morning, until they closed down for lunch. Sara stayed at the shop and Mr. Fogle went out to meet with his wife, like he does every afternoon. When he came back a few hours later so he'd be around for the busier evening shift, the shop had been opened back up for business and he found her like that."

She paused for a moment, before starting again. "We mentioned before, there aren't usually a lot of murders in the wizarding world where it's not immediately obvious who did it. This seems to be one of the exceptions. We talked to Mr. Fogle and his other shop assistant, as well as Sara's family, her boyfriend, and her roommate. So far as any of them said, she had no quarrels with anyone, nor anyone that would obviously benefit from her death, and she wasn't killed with magic. Nothing seems to be missing from the shop so far as Fogle can tell, either."

"We could really use your help," Potter concluded.

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A/N: I'm honestly not sure this is even as good as the last one, but I think it's about as finished as it's going to get. It's a matter of posting it or waffling indefinitely, so I've finally decided to go with posting it. There will be a total of ten short chapters. Reviews are awesome if you feel like leaving them whether they're good, bad, or indifferent.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Kate Beckett and the Murdered Shopkeep

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Kate Beckett was a professional who generally loved what she did and was good at it. Still, she really did not like the idea of working with wizards again after the last frustrating experience. However, the idea that a murderer might get away without her help, well, that was worse than any amount of frustration. It didn't hurt to realize once her initial dismay faded a bit that if they helped these aurors figure out more about what she did as a detective, they would need to call her less. At least that's what she'd decided to hope as she sat in their headquarters, learning about this new case.

She flipped through the folder that they'd given her with information about the victim they'd compiled themselves, looking it over. Obviously she'd want to re-interview most of the people of interest herself, that went without saying. It did seem as if the three of them had done a reasonably competent job on preliminary interviews, though. They'd noted both what was said and the demeanor of the interviewee as she had emphasized last time. Even if it didn't look like it had done them any good, the fact they'd followed her earlier instructions did bode well, Kate thought. It also put the re-interviews a little lower on her priority list.

Speaking of priorities, "What have you done about the crime scene and the body?"

"Keep-out wards and a freezing spell. We figured you'd want someone from your organization to go over it and that was the best we could do to preserve things until we got the okay to bring you in again. Is there anything else you're going to need for that?" Granger said in response.

"Yes. At the very least I want one of our medical examiners to process the body and immediate scene. That needs to be done as soon as possible, and I also want to see it for myself before anything is moved."

"Do you have someone specific in mind? We really want to keep the number of people brought in as low as possible – and we did assume you'd want to see it. Ron and Hermione can take you off to the scene while I go grab your examiner if you tell me who and where," Potter offered.

"Lanie Parish. She'd be in at the morgue today." Beckett gave him instructions on its location and Potter left in a pop of displaced air.

That settled, Granger and Weasley stood to lead the rest of them out of the office. They ended up exiting the department to get on a very old-style elevator which took them down several floors to an open atrium. The space was a large and bustling one, filled with what were presumably witches and wizards going about their daily business. Granger explained, "Our building has an outlet onto Lumos Avenue – it'll be easier for us to just walk there than to transport all of you again."

The atrium was impressive, no denying it. Two other elevators aside from the one they'd exited were situated between a long row of fireplaces against a back wall. A number of wizards were hurrying into those to disappear in a giant flash of green flame, while an equal number were popping out of flames and heading into the building. Small signs by each fireplace designated which ones were for incoming and outgoing travel. Although the fireplace traffic drew her eye first, the interior space of the room was dominated by a huge chandelier glowing with an unnatural-looking bluish light. It was situated directly over a giant inlaid seal declaring the building the New York Magic Authority. The sides of the room featured a number of archways, presumably leading to other parts of the building.

Despite all of the grandeur of the room, what really drew the eye was the scene out the windows. The wall opposite the elevators and floos was a panoramic view through giant glass frames. Beckett managed to keep enough control of her expression not to gape, but a sideways glance at Castle and the boys showed that she was the only one managing such restraint. Not that she was surprised by that, but she didn't blame them. The view was unexpected and fantastic as well as strangely fascinating.

The wizards had mentioned that technology didn't mesh well with magic, and how that was a big part of the problem with trying to update their world, isolationism aside. That knowledge still had not prepared her to look out onto a street and feel like she was seeing an historical novel in progress. Well, a fantasy historical novel, considering that everyone was wearing robes and quite a few people were sporting pointy hats that she wouldn't have expected to see outside of Halloween costumes.

Beckett wouldn't ever admit it to her team, but she hadn't been entirely immune to the lure of the idea of magic - in the abstract, at least. Actually seeing the bustle of the streets with magic visible everywhere even before they walked out the doors, she couldn't help feeling a surge of excitement and interest. However, much like she'd done nearly three years ago when the Tisdale case had led her to actually working with her favorite author, she hid it behind her professional face. If only this were to turn out so well.

Once they had been given a little time to recover from their astonishment, the auror duo lead them out of the atrium and down the steps into the fascinating world outside. As they walked down the street, she took in the shop windows. Cauldrons boiled away, robes were being tailored by scissors and measuring tapes working without the visible assistance of any hands, and there was so much frenetic activity in the display of what looked to be a games store (a presumption based on what was clearly a chess set) that she couldn't even make sense of it all. Kate also kept an eye on Castle's expression, because that was almost as fascinating to watch as all the magical sights and sounds surrounding them.

It was perhaps a block or so later when the two wizards turned them towards a little side alley, where a sign for Wondrous Animals was prominently visible hanging over a doorway a fair distance from the main street. The group came to a halt at the storefront – unlike all the other shops so far, the windows were darkened and shuttered. Granger raised her wand and made several passes across the door, apparently undoing the aforementioned wards, although Beckett didn't see any visible result from the wand waving.

Kate took in the scene as they walked into the store, mapping the space in her mind in comparison to the photographs they had already seen. The first thing to make an impression was where the body lay – not too far from the counter with the cash register, near the back of the store and out of line-of-sight to the windows at the front. It was also relatively close to both the back door and the storeroom holding a great deal of animal feed and cages not currently on display. She made a mental note that the latter would have been an easy place to hide amongst all of the piled stock.

"So considering we're in a pet shop, was the murderer a real animal? A real _magical_ animal?" Castle asked.

Ryan was the only one who did him the favor of responding at all, with a scoff. That hardly stopped the writer from continuing, though. "They really don't look all that magical," Castle added, tapping on the side of an aquarium holding a fat toad.

"Castle? Focus." As many times as she'd had to say that by now, it came out almost absently while she was thinking things over. Normally, Beckett's team went into a scene with a whole passel of other officers to process everything, but that didn't mean that her team didn't know what to do to get the job done on their own if necessary. Once she'd gotten an idea of all the important parts of the scene clear in her head, she told Castle not to touch anything else, hoped he'd listen, and began making measurements and sketching everything out. She directed Ryan and Weasley to work together with a wizarding camera to take additional photographs – this time ones with measurement scales when necessary, and supplementary ones that the wizards hadn't known to take. Esposito took it on his own initiative to question Granger more thoroughly about who found the scene and what other people might have been through the area before it was sealed off.

Castle interrupted several minutes into their various tasks. "What's wrong with the body? She looks all... weird."

It was true. The body looked almost, but not quite, as if it had been frozen. Kate Beckett had seen a lot of dead bodies, but never one that looked anything like this. The color was all wrong - it looked almost fake, though it hadn't in the pictures they'd seen earlier. Hermione spoke up to answer. "That's just the freezing charm we put on the body. It was the best thing we could think of to preserve it. Did you want me to ..."

"No," Kate replied decisively, forestalling the woman's movement towards the body. "Let's wait until Dr. Parish gets here for that."

A short while later, they had done all that they could do without Lanie's assistance. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot for them to work with here aside from the body, and that would be left for the medical examiner's expert hands. Nothing had been obviously knocked about in a struggle, and there were no odd signs of tampering on the door locks. They would still be taking prints, but unless something turned up weird on the back door or in the stock room, the scene itself was a public storefront, frequently visited by a great deal of the wizarding public and touched by their largely unrecorded fingerprints.

When Beckett went over this out loud, Weasley pointed out that there were spells both for unlocking doors and for preventing spells for unlocking doors from working. When she asked if there was any way to determine if they had been used in this case, Weasley told her that the store owner had employed a fairly standard set of wards, whatever that entailed. He clarified a bit when it was clear what he'd said didn't help much. According to the auror, it would have taken a particularly skilled wizard or a great deal of time to magically pick the locks without leaving obvious traces. Considering that the store had likely been open, or at least had its public entrance unlocked at the time of the crime, Kate hadn't held much hope for anything from the back areas, and this only made it even less likely.

They hadn't quite gotten to the point of standing around and waiting before the bell over the front door chimed. Granger and Weasley had been telling them a little bit more about magical animals at Castle's request. Though Beckett didn't really figure it would be terribly relevant to the investigation, it was interesting. So it was good timing for Lanie to be ushered in by Potter, who was carrying a bag for her. To Kate, who knew the woman pretty well, the medical examiner was obviously a bit flustered but trying not to show it. She indicated where the body was to her friend so the woman could get to work, although she found herself on the end of a glance that clearly said she had some explaining to do later. Granger quickly went over with the medical examiner to undo what they'd done magically to preserve the state of the body. Kate took a moment to watch as the witch waved her wand and suddenly the corpse took on a more normal appearance.

While Lanie was doing her thing, Potter came over to where Kate and her team were standing – except for Castle who was peering into a cage of fluffy little owls. The easily distracted author moved to join them when Potter started a discussion about what they were planning on doing next, though.

"I do want to have a face-to-face with the people who were closest to her myself, so I can get a feel for them. You did a good job from the notes you took, so I'd rather wait on that until after we have a little more to go on, if possible. Hopefully Lanie will find something during the autopsy. For now, I think the next step should be checking out her apartment. Granger said her roommate would be around this afternoon?" Kate paused, and then added, "We do need someone to canvas the area around the shop. You haven't wanted us talking to your people by ourselves, so if you could do it, or assign someone to," she looked to Potter. "We just need to know of anyone who might have come in here and seen anything, or if any of the nearby shops noticed anyone acting suspiciously. I know you did some asking already, but it's the kind of thing we like to double-check."

Potter assured her that they would get someone to do it, and when she insisted that the sooner they got it done the better, he pulled out his wand and sent off what he said was a message to the office – Kate got only the fleeting impression of a large glowing shape with antlers. He assured her that they'd have a few people down here working on it within the hour.

"There is one other thing," Beckett began. "We normally look into a victim's finances, and I noticed you didn't have any information on that. Can you put someone on it?"

Potter looked a little uncomfortable. "What exactly are you looking for? Wizards don't handle money like you do, exactly."

"We weren't expecting credit cards and ATMs, but what, wizards don't have banks?" Esposito asked, disbelieving.

"We do, they're just run by goblins. And goblins do not like to give out information. Ever." He paused. "I can send someone to the local Gringott's branch, but – you'd have better luck trying to ask her relatives, I'd bet."

Beckett kept her sigh of annoyance mostly internal. She took one last look around the scene and indicated to the aurors that she was ready for them all to move on.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Hermione Granger and the Potioneers

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It didn't take too long to get from Lumos Avenue to the victim's apartment, though Harry and Ron stayed behind. The plan was for them to assist Dr. Parish in closing the scene back down and transporting the body to the morgue so the woman could finish up her investigation. Harry would also need to file some extra papers with the non-magical authorities so there wouldn't be any issues processing a body they wouldn't have a lot of the normal paperwork on. Hopefully it wouldn't be too much of a hassle considering the steps already taken to establish the auror's legitimacy with other experts from various agencies.

They'd all catch up with each other back at the office later. In the meantime, Hermione accompanied the detective team from the 12th on New York's equivalent of the Knight Bus. It wasn't vibrantly purple, but aside from that it was much the same – the ride was bumpy and safety restraints were direly lacking. Although the writer of the team seemed to get a certain amount of glee out of the experience, even he looked a little green by the time they all disembarked.

Sara Klein shared a decent-sized flat just outside the designated magical district of New York with another witch by the name of Elise Maulkin. When they'd spoken to Maulkin after discovering Sara's body, Hermione had told the woman that they would be by sometime soon to see the place and gotten an idea of when she'd be available. The aurors had waited for the detective team to be brought in so that they'd have a better idea what to look for and so they wouldn't have to intrude twice.

Although she hadn't much liked hanging around the dead shopkeeper's body, Hermione had definitely enjoyed getting to see the team of detectives work again. One of the things that she'd always found strangest about the transition from muggle life into being a witch was how little most wizards actually used their brains. Oh, they weren't abnormally stupid for the most part, but it was as if the ease of magic had left them with little motivation for trying to ever use logic or work anything out. Hermione wouldn't give up being a witch for anything, but having the chance to reform how the aurors worked by bringing in people who could actually piece together clues and solve a mystery was something she felt was profoundly important.

Sara and Elise were obviously both very organized people, if their apartment was anything to judge by. Although it wasn't quite upscale enough to actually be inside the magical portion of the city, it was one of the buildings nearby that were owned by wizards and thus not problematically filled with muggle technologies that might easily get fried by accident. Elise had told Hermione in advance that she'd be home in the afternoon hours to let the group of them in to look at the apartment within the next couple days, and Hermione found her attention split between the detectives as they roamed the place looking for useful hints as to problems in Klein's life.

Beckett switched between looking around the rooms and asking a few questions of Elise, who seemed a bit lost as to what to do with herself while the apartment was searched. Hermione noticed that the detective actually repeated some of the questions Hermione and the others had already asked in a slightly different form and was surprised when she actually managed to use the repetition to get more information than they had. A part of her was tempted to start taking notes, but Hermione managed to curb the impulse.

The aurors had asked where she was employed during the first round of questioning and been told that she also worked in a shop on Lumos Avenue like Sara had. In her case, Elise had told them that she was employed by Enchanting Ingredients, a supplier of potions ingredients and herbologist supplies. It hadn't occurred to her to ask any more about the woman's interest in potions. Beckett did ask, either because of her lack of knowledge of the magical world or because she was really hoping for further relevant information. Either way, Elise admitted that both women had a deft hand at brewing and part of the reason they'd chosen to live together in the flat they had was because it had been outfitted by the original builder with a shielded potions laboratory of decent size. Likewise, she mainly took the job at Ingredients for the discount it got the two of them on supplies. Although they were not yet making enough to support themselves, she and Sara had been selling a decent amount of potions to one of the apothecaries on the Avenue, Brewer's Best.

Beckett and her author shadow had remained out in the main living room of the flat so that the female detective could ask her questions, but the other half of their team had gone ahead into Sara's room. Elise had just finished replying that, no, she didn't know of any particular problems that Sara had with anyone lately when Esposito called for Beckett from that room.

Hermione followed as they moved in that direction, though Beckett very politely asked Elise to stay out in the common area. "Check this out," Esposito said, holding up a sheaf of parchments as soon as the three of them were in the room. "Boyfriend said everything was good between them, but these letters tell a different story."

Beckett took the letters and began scanning over them while the other two detectives went back to going through the rest of the desk. The detective had only flipped through to the second page when she was interrupted again. As they had entered the room, Castle's attention had been immediately drawn to a wizarding photo collage stuck up on the wall next to the vanity's mirror. Hermione's attention had been on Beckett and the letters, so she was as surprised as anyone when the writer spoke to her, "Did you find a fancy necklace with the body? Sara's wearing the same piece of jewelry in every one of these pictures."

"No," Hermione was a little confounded by the question and moved over to where the man was still peering at the photos to get a look herself. "No one mentioned anything about a necklace, and she wasn't wearing one when we were called in to the scene." It was true; looking at every single appearance of the alive and smiling Sara Klein, there was an eye-catching configuration of filigree and sparkle hanging just below her collarbone.

Both exited and distracted by the new discovery, Hermione was a bit startled when Beckett's voice called out from just behind her through the doorway to Elise, asking the witch to join them. The detective questioned her about the necklace – if Sara always wore it and whether it had recently gone missing. Elise was quite shocked to hear that they hadn't found it with her roommate. Apparently it was some kind of family heirloom, a much treasured gift from the woman's great-grandmother. Elise couldn't state with certainty that Sara had been wearing it when she'd left for work the morning of the murder since Elise had to go in earlier to her own job. She did say that she definitely saw Sara wearing it when they'd had a discussion about their brewing budget the night before.

The detectives were systematic in their search, and it didn't take them much longer to get through the rest of Sara's bedroom. Nothing else seemed to be of particular note, though Ryan did ask her to take a look at the magical books on the shelf and mention if there was anything particularly unusual. Considering what Elise had told them, a few advanced potions volumes and a couple wizarding romances did not warrant any further scrutiny.

Beckett turned to her as soon as she was done looking over the bookshelf. "Is there any reason we shouldn't go into this potions workroom?"

Hermione bit her lip in thought. "I'll have to ask Elise if they have anything in progress and go first, but so long as you don't touch anything without asking ..."

"Alright. Castle, that means you. _No touching."_

_ "_You know, I heard that a whole lot less before we met," the writer replied, and winked at Hermione as Beckett stalked out of the room to ask Elise about the lab.

The witch had no problems with letting them into the potions lab – she said that the two of them didn't currently have anything brewing since they had been waiting for a new shipment of rare ingredients to come in where she worked. She couldn't imagine they'd find anything pertinent, but they were free to look. Suiting action to her words, Elise pulled out her wand and unwarded the door for them.

Thanking her, Hermione opened it and proceeded inside. Her first thought was that Elise had been wrong; three of the four small benches in the room were empty, but the fourth held a full cauldron suspended over a very low magical flame. She turned back to the woman, who they had again asked to wait outside, and Elise confirmed that it wasn't hers and she didn't know of anything Sara would have been working on alone.

Hermione walked over to the bench with Beckett's team following a short distance behind. She didn't need to ask Elise what the potion was. It had been years since she'd done much with potions, but there were certain brews she didn't think she'd ever forget how to recognize. Amortentia was definitely one of them. The mother-of-pearl sheen, the steam coming off it spiraling just so, the smell – yes, she was certain about the contents of that cauldron. Which was worrisome.

As much as some might be inclined to laugh, she agreed entirely with what Slughorn had told them that day in class so long ago – it was a very dangerous potion. While the Ministry back home didn't tend to officially do much about dangerous potions, aside from placing restrictions on the saleability of certain ingredients, things here were a different story. It wasn't illegal to brew, but it was to sell or to use on an unknowing subject. Which made this large, full cauldron a very strange anomaly.

"What _is _that," Esposito asked from behind her, "it smells like weird chemicals and perfume."

"No it doesn't. It smells like coffee and cherries, and," Castle stopped to inhale again, and Hermione noticed that the potion was definitely affecting all of them into drawing closer and inhaling deeply.

Hermione cut off any further commentary, before the muggles got any more distracted by the potion's vapors. "It smells different for everyone. It's a very powerful love potion called Amortentia, it smells like the person - or the things you associate with the person, really, that you find most attractive. It might be important – it's not illegal to possess it, but it is to sell it or to use it on someone without their knowledge, so I can't think of any good reason for her to be brewing it."

"A love potion is illegal?" Ryan asked incredulously. "Why?"

"It may sound silly, but love potions are not something to mess around with. It doesn't really create love. What it does is cause an obsessive infatuation, one that could make someone under its influence behave very erratically."

"Like say, murdering someone?" Ryan asked. Hermione nodded in affirmation.

Beckett mused aloud, "So what was she doing with it?"

"That's something we should definitely find out," Hermione said, very much wondering what the answer might be.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four: Javier Esposito and the First Suspect

* * *

They may not have had the training, but you couldn't say that the aurors hadn't been paying attention on their last case with the team. As soon as the group had gotten back from the vic's apartment, they had found a big whiteboard waiting for them in the room they were using, and Beckett had started setting it up. There wasn't a whole lot to go on and no obvious suspects yet, but they did have a good place to start. A missing possession and a quasi-legal substance in Sara's apartment were both suspicious, and either one could potentially lead them to their murderer.

While Beckett was writing, a man in robes (wizard fashion left much to be desired, he thought) called Potter out of the room for a moment. When the auror came back in, he reported that the officers he'd sent out to do another canvas of the surrounding shops had come back with nothing useful. Having seen the site, Esposito wasn't entirely surprised. Good witnesses were hard to find at the best of scenes, and this place was on its own alleyway. On top of the disconcerting ability of wizards to pop in and out whenever they wanted, the odds got that much lower.

Beckett finished making the last notation and capped the marker in her hand. Placing it on the tray with a clink, she stepped back from the board and started things off. "Okay. We have three possible leads here. We have a missing necklace that the roommate says was a family heirloom. We'll talk to the family about it when we re-interview them. In the meantime, I assume there are places in the wizarding world where you'd go to try and fence something like that?" Beckett tapped the picture they'd brought from the apartment of their victim, smiling and prominently wearing said pendant. She had turned to the aurors on the end of the inquisitive.

They exchanged a look and Potter spoke up, "Uh, yeah. There are a few places we could try. Do you really think someone killed her to sell her necklace?"

The auror sounded pretty dubious about the suggestion, and it made Esposito start to wonder exactly what crimes the aurors did deal with for the first time. It wasn't that he had no interest, but he was here to do the job, catch the scumbag, and go home, so he'd put any curiosity aside.

While he was sidetracked by the thought, Beckett responded. "We don't know why, that's why we have to look into all the possibilities. Likewise, we need to talk to anyone who might know why she was brewing that potion. Her roommate claimed to have no idea and seemed genuinely shocked when we asked her about it."

"Anyone she was making it for isn't going to want to fess up to it," Weasley interjected. "Love potions are wicked nasty stuff."

"Yeah, well, most of the people we deal with don't want to tell us what we need to know. It's our job to find out anyway."

"There won't be any storefront setups willing to sell a potion like that, but the regular potioneers might know if anyone has been around lately looking for love potions," Potter added thoughtfully.

"Next thing. When interviewed, her boyfriend indicated their relationship was fine according to your notes, and you thought he seemed pretty broken up. Except we just found this," she gestured to the letters bagged on the table, "stack of letters in her room, that obliquely reference an argument and talk about giving things another chance. Someone telling us lies is never a good sign. Try to get him to agree to come back in to answer a few more questions without raising his suspicions."

Visiting the scene and the vic's apartment had taken the late morning into afternoon and now, after going over what they did and didn't have, it was well into the evening. Working under Beckett, he and Ryan were well used to going for hours with little pause. Looking at the flagging aurors, however, it was obvious that they weren't used to working under such a harsh taskmaster. Considering that this was really their case and they were the local experts, so to speak, it was probably time to wind things down. Except that getting Beckett to call it a night was always a challenge and a half. Not even Castle generally had much luck on that front, although as Esposito was still considering options, the author had obviously decided to give it a try. "So, it sounds like our next step is to interview the family again tomorrow?" Beckett didn't gainsay him, but she didn't really spare him more than a glance from her study of the board. "Speaking of being done for the day, how are we getting back and forth every day if we're setting up here, wherever here is?"

Castle had shared a whole slew of elaborate theories with he and Ryan one day about the mysterious past of these aurors. Some days it seemed like the longer the author was part of their team, the more elaborate and unbelievable his stories got. The ones he'd made up for their new acquaintances were no exception, filled with scores of evil wizards and vigilante justice that ultimately lead to their relocation here. While Esposito didn't really think the fanciful imaginings had anything to do with the real story, Castle wasn't the only one who'd noticed that the group got oddly uncomfortable in the face of certain topics. They did definitely seem to have the same kind of indefinable until-the-wheels-fall-off bond you only got with people you'd been through hell with. Not to mention the ability to communicate without saying a word, magic aside, which they were doing now in response to Castle's question.

Potter finally turned from their non-verbal conversation to give a reluctant answer. Didn't look like they were all in agreement as to what to say, but somebody'd won the debate. "We could give you a portkey in and out every day, or we could take you to the Avenue entrance nearest the station. If we do that, though, you have to promise to come straight here and back. The main street between the entrance and the Ministry should be safe enough, but there is still a part of the wizard population that really doesn't like muggles."

"Just what are they likely to try in a public place here?" Beckett's tone was belligerent, and Esposito pretty much agreed with her. This whole business of being barely-welcome was wearing ever more thin.

"Look, we don't want to find out, that's the thing," Potter replied, a little exasperation evident in his tone.

"Maybe you should just give us the portkeys," Esposito told him. He didn't much like the idea of being coddled, but they weren't looking for trouble, and this wasn't their world. Traveling by clutching a ladies' scarf while being hurled through space had been hella uncomfortable, but simpler was probably better.

"Aw, c'mon, guys," Castle pleaded. It was obvious the writer wanted to wander through the streets of the magical part of the city – and just as obvious he was the one most likely to find some kind of mischief to get himself into.

Beckett was evidently thinking the same thing, and came right out and said it. "I think we'd better stick with the portkeys for now. Castle's bound to find some way to get into trouble just walking around unsupervised."

The writer looked like he might object, but Beckett just gave him a stern look and an additional, "No, Castle," and he subsided with a pouty face, though it was clear he was muttering something under his breath. Probably better that no one else could make it out. Meanwhile, Potter had searched around the room and picked up a couple of spare markers from the board, tapping them in turn with his wand.

"This one's the portkey back to the station. It'll drop you in the conference room we were using to work on the last case. They work on a timer and it'll go off in five minutes." He handed Beckett the black marker, and held up the other one, which was red. "This one is a portkey set to return to this room at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning."

That was how the four of them found themselves gathered around a marker in one of the empty conference rooms, still feeling faintly ridiculous about it, the next morning. After arriving back at the precinct the previous evening they had spent a short while filling in the Captain about what had happened before heading out. Beckett also checked in with Lanie before she went home for the night, but the morgue was having a busy day and she wasn't ready to talk to them about their case yet.

The wizards had said that people did tend to ignore and rationalize the improbability of people appearing and disappearing by portkey, but if they were going to be coming and going like this for a while, it was best not to stretch the limits of that denial. Therefore they'd arranged with Montgomery for this conference room to be closed off and left unused for the duration.

When the portkey finally activated they arrived to see the team of aurors all industriously working away at some kind of paperwork. Sucked for them that even magic couldn't get you out of that. All three of them looked up at the detective team's arrival.

Once they were settled in and the paperwork was set aside, Potter informed them that they'd turned up nothing about any clandestine artifact dealers having seen the missing jewelry. Likewise, the potions suppliers claimed ignorance of anyone inquiring after Amortentia in particular or love potions in general. It was a disappointment, but not too much of a surprise. The potion's legality was questionable, and it was just as likely the necklace had been taken as a trophy, or at least hadn't been sold yet. The dealers had all agreed to keep an eye out for the jewelry, the auror said, but he cautioned that some of the less honest ones were unlikely to actually stick to that.

After the aurors had filled them in on the fact that they had found nothing new, Beckett made a beeline for the whiteboard, going over it again with fresh eyes while sipping the coffee Castle had brought her before they'd left the precinct. He and Ryan exchanged a look before heading over to the board themselves. Castle, of course, had already plopped down next to Beckett as soon as the detective had made her way over there. That wasn't surprising. What was a little unusual was that he'd given the auror team a lingering glance first, as if the thought of looking over their shoulders for a while had occurred to him and then been dismissed. Then again, Castle being fascinated by the newest shiny thing to come their way wasn't _that_ unusual after all.

The victim's parents were the first ones to be scheduled to come in and talk to the whole group, and they were expecting the boyfriend a short while later. One of the other people working in the office came and knocked to tell them when the parents had arrived. Presumably it was another of the aurors, since Potter had said this floor was reserved for them, but the team hadn't officially introduced them to anyone else. So far the aurors had only said enough about magical law enforcement to tell them there were others who weren't aurors.

Beckett jumped right in to asking them about the missing necklace after giving them her sympathies in that empathetic way she had. Already visibly upset when they'd walked in, the news that the item had gone missing redoubled their distress. Beckett was able to soothe them enough to get them to respond eventually, and they confirmed the roommate's story about it having been a family heirloom – apparently it had been in the family for generations and was always passed down to the eldest daughter of the bloodline when she reached her majority. They had significantly less to say about anyone who might want to take it. It wasn't enchanted in any way, or made of any particularly rare materials, and there were no competing branches of the family that might want it. Esposito sympathized with their loss, he really did, but it was a damn shame they had nothing more useful to say.

The detectives also repeated a couple of the questions that the aurors had already asked about other associates of Sara's. It added a couple of people to their list who she used to be friends with that she only had incidental contact with in recent years. Likely the additions wouldn't be of any help, but Beckett thanked the couple, gave them her condolences again, and sent them on their way.

There was a little bit of a break before the boyfriend was due to show up for his interview. Normally it'd be time spent filling out paperwork and checking leads. With this case being primarily the aurors' domain there was no paperwork for the detectives and the interview with the parents hadn't really given them much of anything to check up on. At least on the part of the non-magical detectives, anyway. Weasley had actually gone off to visit another department to try and get a genealogy workup of the family – even though they said there weren't competing branches of the family, apparently the wizarding community was generally small enough that everyone was somewhat interrelated. The three aurors all insisted that it was something worth checking into despite the family's claims. Still, that was something that involved going into sensitive departments where outsiders like themselves weren't allowed. Apparently. Again.

That left them with little to do but wait, although Castle did his best to keep them all entertained with off-the-wall speculations about how things were different in the wizarding world. Even all these years later, that man's ability to charm just about anybody was still a source of bemusement. The author's enthusiastic and increasingly bizarre tales even managed to distract other aurors wandering past the open door into coming in to see the show. They were all so caught up in listening to the writer spin his tales that it was a full half hour before Beckett brought their attention to the fact that the boyfriend was due that amount of time earlier.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five: Harry Potter and the Multiple Motives

* * *

Harry wouldn't go so far as to wish that more people in the wizarding world got murdered, but he appreciated that Sara Klein's murder had given them another opportunity for working with Detective Beckett's homicide investigation team. Being an auror generally left you investigating all kinds of things, and he loved the fact that he got to spend his days with his two best friends. It wasn't easy work and could often be frustrating or even depressing, but it felt worthwhile more often than not.

As rough as his job could often be, since most of the auror's cases didn't involve murder, he found it surprising just how much fun the homicide team was to be around when they dealt with death every day. If they hadn't been involved in this case, Harry had no doubt that it would have been that much harder for his team to handle – and not just because of the detective work required that they were just barely starting to get a better handle on understanding.

Despite how fun they were, they were also impressive in terms of their professionalism. Once they realized that the boyfriend was late, the team went from stories and playful banter to all business in a second. Before he even realized what he was saying, Harry had already agreed to Beckett's assertion that they needed to go to the man's home to try and find him. He probably should have insisted the muggles stay back at the office for their own safety, but he opted not to. For one, he didn't want a replay of the aggravation the last case had caused the detectives. The tension from that had caused all of them a certain amount of discomfort. More importantly, however, he didn't really expect the man to be at his house if he was avoiding the aurors, so it should probably be safe enough.

Since they were visiting a wizard's residence, Beckett semi-graciously allowed Harry and Hermione to take the lead. There was no one answering the door at his apartment, so a quick unlocking charm and they were on their way in. There was a slight delay where the detectives were concerned about whether or not they were allowed to do that. Harry assured them that since they were working as agents of the auror office they were.

The group from the muggle world was impressed by the concept of the _homenum revelio_ spell Hermione cast that made it definitively clear that no one was home. For his part, Harry was impressed with the efficiency with which the detectives went through the apartment. It wasn't that the aurors never had call to search someone's home, but rather that although a great deal of training was required to become an auror, general evidence searches was not one of the topics covered. It was obvious that was a different matter entirely for the police detectives.

"Hey, Beckett," Ryan called to draw everyone's attention to the bedroom. Stepping into the room, it was obvious that someone had packed up most of the things from the closet in a great deal of hurry. Discarded pieces of clothing and shoes were strewn all around the bed.

"Huh. You said the boyfriend told you they had a pretty good relationship?" Castle asked, and then followed up with, "I think we were right in suspecting he was lying," while holding up a smashed photo frame he pulled from the garbage can sitting by a desk under the window. In the photo, Sara Klein and Charlie Rhodes – the man they were here looking for – were smiling and mooning for the camera, arms around one another.

It wasn't the only photo in the trash either. There were several others featuring the couple that had been torn up or were intact within smashed up frames. The writer reached in carefully to pull them out as the others watched, and then he came back up with something that wasn't a photo. Unfolding and smoothing out the crumpled ball of parchment against the surface of the desk, the writer started to read through it, but apparently not quite fast enough for Beckett's taste.

"Well, Castle? Don't keep us waiting."

The writer dramatically crinkled the paper and cleared his throat before beginning to read, "Andrew – I wouldn't write to you again, but I don't know where else to turn. I can't believe she did this! That conniving witch! I'm so glad she's gone," the writer paused for a moment. He began in a more normal tone of voice, "This next part is crossed out, 'Do you think Janna will ever f-o-r-g-' and that's all he wrote."

Detective Beckett turned towards him. "When you did the interviews, did you see any mention of an Andrew or a Janna?"

Hermione spoke up before Harry could come up with an answer from his own memory. "I'm pretty sure that Andrew was his brother."

"Did you get contact information for this brother or their parents? What about mutual friends he shared with Sara who might know where he'd go to hide out?"

"Uh, no, but we should be able to look into that back at the office. Should I ..." Harry offered. He'd noticed that Detective Beckett was generally insistent about following up on things as soon as possible, so he figured he should offer.

The detective shook her head, "We'll finish up here first." While they'd been talking, the team had been continuing on with their investigation of the apartment. They'd finished the bedroom and Ryan was already coming back out of the bathroom.

Meanwhile, Harry had turned to Hermione, and noticed that she had stood back a little apart from the detectives and was running through several non-verbal spells. Looking closer, he realized that they were all location and tracking spells – one of the things the auror training program did spend quite some time on. Unfortunately by the deepening furrow in her brow, it was clear she wasn't having any luck. When Castle noticed and asked what they were doing, Harry explained, and Hermione dropped her wand as the attention of the whole group turned to her. "Sorry. I can't get anything. He has to be hiding behind some pretty powerful wards somewhere."

Beckett gave Hermione a nod of acknowledgment, clearly appreciating that she'd taken the initiative to try, and the team went back to their search. It wasn't until they were going through the tiny utility kitchen that they found anything else weird. The bedroom had been a hectic mess of post-packing debris. The kitchen on the other hand was mostly tidy and neatly arrayed, with two single exceptions. On the counter, setting open with its contents partially spilled across the surface was a large box full of tea packets. They looked to be some kind of independently mixed flavors labeled in spidery cursive script in small cloth bags, probably bought from one of the shops on Lumos Avenue. Harry himself had never been much for the beverage in any form, so he couldn't say for certain which shop. It wasn't really important because the tea wouldn't have been terribly interesting if it weren't for the fact that it wasn't just tea in the box. Intermixed amongst the bags of tea were small vials of liquid.

The second exception to the neatness of the kitchen was that two of those vials were shattered against the far wall, splat marks and broken glass scattered around a little dinette table with two chairs. Hermione, who had always been better at remembering things about potions than Harry had, took one of the vials and examined it. First, she held it up to the light and then she uncorked it and smelled it, already nodding to herself before she had it resealed.

"Amortentia again." She informed the rest of them.

"The love potion our victim was brewing?" Ryan asked, slightly appalled.

"You're all thinking what I'm thinking, right?" The writer asked enthusiastically. "It totally fits with the letter! She was dosing him with love potion and he found out and killed her in a rage at being manipulated like that! Janna must have been his girlfriend before Sara got all psychotic on him."

"The problem with that theory, Castle, is that the letter implied she was already dead when he figured it out."

Castle pouted, and then brightened in quick succession. "He could have just been trying to throw anyone reading it off from suspecting him!"

"Maybe, but I think we should talk to his brother first before we jump to any wild, writer-borne conclusions. You didn't even consider that maybe _he_ was dosing someone else. We found the potion hidden in _his_ kitchen, after all," Finishing up bagging the vials as evidence, Beckett turned back to Harry. "I think we're done here. Back to the office?"

When they got back to the Auror's Office at the Ministry, Ron was there waiting for them. While they had been doing their search, he had gotten the genealogy workup he'd left for before the rest of them had gone off to see Rhodes' apartment.

Harry had expected a fairly complex family tree, belying the assertion of Sara's family that there were no other branches to have any claim to the heirloom necklace that had gone missing. There wasn't such a deep underlying current of blood purity obsession over on this side of the pond, but it wasn't entirely nonexistent, either. Beyond that, the wizarding world was still a set of geographically distant, comparatively small populations that didn't tend to travel very much. Together those influences lead to a lot of tangled family trees.

That didn't mean that there would actually be anyone willing to kill over a contested possession, and Harry didn't really expect there to be. It was a possibility, however, and it had seemed strange that the family was so emphatic that there couldn't be anyone else. Still, for an item with no obvious magical properties murder to reclaim it seemed a bit far-fetched, he had thought.

Going over what Ron had found, it turned out that it wasn't quite so remote of a possibility as Harry had suspected. Wizarding genealogies were a little bit standard genealogies and a little bit magic. They kept track of all blood relations to a family and self-updated whenever there was a new birth, marriage, or death. In addition to showing the bare facts of relation, most of these very particular histories kept track of relatives that were disinherited or left unclaimed from a lack of marital connection between the two parents. Such descendants appeared, but were specially marked – disinheritance with a strike through their names and illegitimate births with broken connective lines.

About five generations back, the eldest witch in the family had been disinherited (for reasons unspecified) and she had descendants who were still using the family name. From what Harry had learned in dealing with previous cases, usually families who were written out like that tended to take on the name of their spouse, or even to legally change to a new name – unless there was a major contention about the disinheritance. Those kinds of disputes, in Harry's experience, could easily turn to conflicts and even sometimes full-blown blood feuds.

Just as interestingly, Ron had taken a closer look at the branch and found that the woman who was disinherited and her children had all lived out in the Midwest somewhere - until the most recent daughter had come back to New York with her husband when he'd taken a position with the local quodpot team just within the last year.

That wasn't the only interesting development they found back at the office, either. Sara's roommate had dropped by. She'd been packing up Sara's things and found a book stashed in the side of the couch that she'd seen Sara recently reading. The book wasn't terribly interesting – at least to anyone other than Castle who wanted to know more about wizard-written fiction – but the letter that had fallen out of it was. It said simply, "I know. 11pm. Be back here or it all comes out."

Beckett took charge of the note, with the intention of taking it back to their labs to have it checked for prints. She likewise had asked the aurors if she should transfer the potion out of the vials they'd found it in to have those checked, too. Since it was about that time, they got all the things Beckett needed to take back to the labs sorted at that point, and then took a break for food at Ron's suggestion.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six: Kevin Ryan and the Time for Questions

* * *

One of the reasons Kevin had always found himself half-believing even the wildest of Castle's theories was that he'd been a cop long enough to see and hear about some of the most bizarre circumstances imaginable. Especially since he'd started working with Beckett who had a real knack for catching the weird ones. Of course it didn't hurt that the man was a damn good storyteller. His partner liked to look to the most prosaic explanations first and only accept the weird if he had to, but Ryan preferred to keep an open mind. According to Esposito, his mind was a little too open to the weird sometimes, but the two of them really did just have different ways of looking at the world. Which was generally a good thing in a partner.

So when they were down to either long lost relatives killing someone over a family heirloom of no particular value or slipping someone love potions of near mind-controlling strength, he was able to take it mostly in stride. With two avenues of investigation to follow, the team chose to split up. The aurors had managed to find current locations for both the long lost relatives and the brother of their vic's boyfriend. He was surprised that it took them only a day to do so. They had seen how antiquated the main shopping district for wizards in New York was, and been generally aware that most wizards didn't really integrate with non-magical society. Still, it was one of those things it was easy to know abstractly and not really think about the details of. These people generally didn't have drivers licenses or social security numbers. They didn't use cell phones or ATMs. Presumably there were some kind of records, because any government he'd ever heard of taxed its people – but that didn't mean the records were easily accessible or even kept up-to-date frequently, so long as the payments came in.

Thankfully, though, the lack of modern tracking opportunities was somewhat offset by the fact that the 'wizarding world' was not really that big of a place. Even counting all the wizards and witches in New York, it was a lot more like a moderate-size town than a big city – there was a sufficient degree to which everybody knew everybody to allow for a little asking around to be enough to find someone, so long as they weren't trying too hard to hide.

Since neither of the people they next planned to talk to was making any effort at all to hide, and the aurors didn't mind them knowing they were being sought, that made things even easier. Ryan knew he'd never look at owls the same way again. Apparently some of them were magical and they could find anybody wherever they were – so long as they weren't behind a handful of very specific, powerful warding spells. The aurors told them that tracing owls or finding people with other spells was much more complicated magic, but sometimes possible – again it depended on what wards they might be using. So the lack of modern methods of tracing wasn't such a terrible roadblock as it had first seemed after all. Magic might not do everything, seeing as how they still couldn't find the boyfriend himself, but even technology had its limits when tracking down the truly savvy criminals.

Although they'd told both the brother and the disowned relatives to come in and talk to them, the general consensus was that there was far more to go on with the boyfriend. Therefore Beckett wanted to take the lead when it came to questioning his brother and nobody was going to protest. Although her frustrations with this case had been less than the last one they'd worked with the aurors, it was still clearly wearing a little on their lead detective's need to be in control.

They didn't have handy one-way mirrors here at the auror's headquarters – apparently the aurors didn't really do much in the way of controlled interrogations. It also wasn't a good idea to have the whole team of them crowded into a room for the questioning – in Ryan's experience, even those with absolutely nothing to hide would become reticent if they felt too hemmed in and threatened. With Beckett taking the lead, that meant Castle was with her and he and Esposito were sitting this one out. There was a little discussion amongst the three aurors about who would join them, with the final decision being towards Harry, since he was the leader of their team.

That left four of them at lose ends, unless the disowned relatives arrived significantly earlier than expected. Back at their own precinct, there would be plenty of paperwork to keep them busy, but here there really wasn't much for them to do. Not even Castle's usual recourse of playing Angry Birds was an option – they'd been reminded technology did not fare well in strongly magical environments before Potter had brought them here the first time. Ryan was a little surprised the writer hadn't tried bringing his phone along anyway, but since Castle hadn't mentioned either a broken phone or bragged about getting one to work, he must not have.

The two aurors spent some of the time filling out paperwork of their own at their desks, but afterward they came back to rejoin the two detectives in waiting. He and Espo had been having a short chat about the latest happenings in the baseball season and some of the newest console games due out in the next couple months for lack of anything better to occupy their time. Weasley asked what they'd normally be doing back at the precinct, and they explained about the two-way mirrors, which lead to a discussion about how useful such a concept was and Granger speculating about a number of spells that could be used to similar effect. It was a way to pass some time at least.

When the interrogation team finally emerged from the room, to someone who knew her, Beckett looked frustrated. Castle on the other hand, was quite plainly amused for anyone to see. Potter he couldn't really get a read on, other than politeness as he escorted the brother out. While they were waiting for Potter to return, Esposito went ahead and asked what they were all wondering, with just a hint of impatience, "Well?"

"I'd really like to talk to Charlie Rhodes," Beckett began.

"Andrew had quite an interesting story to tell," Castle jumped in, excitedly. "Charlie and Sara weren't actually dating, and never had been. It was all just an act they were putting on for her parents, because they had been trying to get her to date eligible sons of their friends. According to Andrew Rhodes, everyone knew they weren't really a couple except their families. The two of them hung out as friends and fake-dated, and he said they were working together on something, but Charlie never talked about her romantically. So that means Sara definitely wasn't dosing him with the love potion! Also? Janna _is_ his ex-girlfriend, I so called that!"

"So, the brother didn't know what they were working on together?" he had to ask, just to clarify before Castle got too distracted in crowing about being right.

"I imagine it's possible it had something to do with our oh-so-potent potion?" Castle suggested, eagerly.

"Maybe," Harry said noncommittally. "The brother did tell us that Charlie was always pants at potions, so he definitely wasn't involved in brewing it."

Esposito stood up from where the two of them had been sitting and conversing, to interrupt with his own question. "Do we have any better leads on where Rhodes might be?"

"We do have a few suggestions from the brother," Beckett confirmed, retaking control of the conversation. "I'm not sure how good they are, as he seemed a little reluctant to tell us, but our auror friends are going to look it. Rhodes did say that he would try and tell his brother to turn himself in, because he really didn't believe Charlie would do anything to Sara. As to this mysterious partnership, we don't know exactly what the two of them were into. Considering the love potion, and the letter, likely nothing good, and possibly something illegal," she finished grimly.

"Ooh! I've got it!" As Castle chimed in, Ryan had to wonder if they were going to get one of his actually useful theories, or one of the more outre ones featuring a wizard version of the CIA, possibly with aliens. It really was a complete toss up, some days. "They were dosing his ex with the love potion, to keep her around while they fooled his parents because he didn't want to let her go, and she found out about the pretend affair and killed Sara in a jealous rage!"

"Even if that made any sense, Castle, if all the friends knew it wasn't really real, wouldn't the ex be in on it, too?" Ryan asked, sceptically.

"This love potion stuff makes people crazed, right?" Castle looked to the three aurors, who all nodded, Ron most emphatically, "So she wouldn't have listened to reason. We should talk to this ex-girlfriend," the writer turned his eyes to Beckett.

Beckett finally broke into the writer's train of speculation to ask the room an unrelated question instead. "When are the Laslo family due to get here?"

"We're expecting them to arrive any moment, actually," he replied. Hopefully Beckett would let the two of them handle the second questioning of the day. Ryan never thought he'd see the day where he'd miss having busy work to do.

The boredom must have showed through in his tone, because Beckett smirked at him, "Not enjoying your vacation from paperwork, Ryan?"

"I'd almost prefer it to this doing nothing. I can't even text Jenny from here. Bro, not cool!" So maybe he was in love with his fiancee and talked about her a lot, that was no reason for Espo to make faces about it so blatantly. His partner could at least have the courtesy to do it behind his back!

"Well, you've got something to do now," Beckett said, gesturing to where two witches were being pointed in their direction by another member of the auror squad. "It looks like your turn is here."

Mrs. Laslo and her daughter Ashley didn't have much to say. They claimed that they knew of the split in the family, but that they didn't really care about it since it had occurred a few generations ago and lineage and family connections did not mean nearly so much as they used to. They denied all knowledge of the family heirloom their portion of the family would have had the original claim to without the disowning.

It was clear they were both lying, though. Still, he wasn't sure if was enough to implicate them in the murder. Weasley had explained that some wizards took bloodlines and family names very seriously, and it was clear that the topic of the disowning was a distressing one to these two. Yet they did seem genuinely horrified when specific mention of the murder came up, and they showed no particular recognition to pictures of Sara. They also had what sounded like fairly reasonable alibis for the time of the murder – Mrs. Laslo was at a morning ladies society meeting, and her daughter was at a training apprenticeship with a robe maker. While they were obviously not being entirely truthful, it wasn't a certainty that it related to the murder in any way. They'd have to look into it further to determine if the two were involved or not.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: Ron Weasley and the Missing Boyfriend

* * *

Working with these police detectives was a very different experience than what the three of them normally did as aurors. There was a lot more time spent asking questions and sitting around rather than getting called out to places and chasing down the obviously guilty. Ron wasn't quite sure how he felt about that. He wasn't stupid, whatever he sometimes felt spending as much time as he did with Hermione. This made their normal cases seem downright simple, though. Yet if it meant that they caught more people who were guilty, it couldn't be a bad thing, and it was kind of interesting to look at a case like a puzzle to be solved.

However, right at the moment it was more frustrating than anything. That writer kept monopolizing all his girlfriend's time whenever they weren't working, and he'd hoped that after the day of questioning they'd been through that they'd have some answers. Although he didn't blame the muggles for that; it was obvious from listening to them that they were unable to do a lot of the things they normally would to investigate a crime with their technology. So they could hardly be held responsible for the lack of fast progress.

The day after the round of interviews, the detectives came back in saying that they'd finally heard from their medical examiner. Dr. Parish had been working independently of the rest of them to process the evidence taken from the crime scene, the body, and the other incidentals Beckett's team had turned over. Unfortunately, nothing much had come of it. The weapon had no fingerprints on it. There were no fibers or traces on the body, and nothing that looked like the normal signs of a struggle.

Dr. Parish did mention that there had been some weirdness with her postmortem, though. Sara had been stabbed while laying on the ground and she had a strange pattern of bruising. Contusions on the front of her body and face indicated that Sara had fallen forward to the ground without attempting to break her fall at all. Of course, he and his friends immediately realized that someone must have cast a _petrificus totalus_ spell on Sara before killing her. After they'd explained that to the detectives, Beckett continued on with her summation to say that since the woman had already been on the ground, the angle of the knife wound wasn't indicative for either height or handedness, but it had definitely been the COD. Furthermore, the medical examiner's attempts to confirm the time of death had led her into problematic territory, because the preservation spell on the body had thrown its temperature and rigor off. Dr. Parish had told the detectives that she figured she'd be able to narrow her estimate if she was allowed to study the spell's effects in controlled conditions, but they had a sufficiently small window from Sara's regular daily timeline (as well as evidence from witnesses and the contents of her digestive system from breakfast) that it wasn't a priority unless they ended up with a suspect to nail down an alibi for.

While the weapon had no prints, the note was covered in them, to the point many were impossible to distinguish. The lab had positively identified Sara's, her roommate's, and at least two other sets they didn't have a match to amongst Sara's friends and relatives. The vials they'd taken from the boyfriend's apartment had only his and Sara's prints. There were no prints that shouldn't be there in the storage areas, and the main shop was full of unidentified and unusable ones as expected of such a public scene.

Ron assumed from the tone the detective used when telling them all this that normally there was more to go on than what they currently had. A lot of the casework so far had been a matter of the detectives telling them what they would normally do and the group of them together trying to come up with some equivalent they could do with magic or the Auror Department's resources and connections. Ron hadn't had any idea how easy it had become for people to be tracked in the muggle world in ways that just didn't apply to wizards. Nearly any time muggles bought anything, talked to anyone, or even sometimes anywhere they went it could be tracked. There were a few nifty ways that magic worked just as well or better, like owls and point-me spells, but those were easy enough to circumnavigate with the right kinds of warding magic for sufficiently powerful wizards. Perhaps that was also true of the muggle trackers, but it wasn't the impression he was getting from the way the detectives talked.

Yesterday, after Ryan, Esposito, and Hermione had gotten finished questioning the two Laslo women, Beckett had passed it off onto his team to decide who would go and look into the alibis of the two women. She had also asked a couple of questions about hiring someone to kill someone else in the wizarding world. Ron's two friends weren't exactly surprised by the idea, from their expressions, but he definitely was. That wasn't really something wizards did. Beckett seemed a little reluctant to dismiss the idea, but with assurance from the three of them she eventually switched her focus back to the missing Charlie Rhodes.

The group of them had spent the rest of the evening talking over various ways they might attempt to track Rhodes, coming to few conclusions. The three aurors had already tried most of the ways one could track someone with magic and come up empty. Wherever Rhodes was, there were enough powerful wards that it was going to be impossible to find him unless someone turned him in or he got himself caught out in public. A few members of the Magical Enforcement Squad had been sent out directly after the interview with Charlie's brother, but as of today, they still hadn't turned up anything, either. For the moment, they'd just have to hope his brother could talk Charlie into turning himself in, and keep someone periodically recasting the detection spells.

Once it became clear there was nothing more to cover there, they'd eventually switched back to talking about the Laslos again. They had gotten confirmation of the alibis of the Laslos for the morning of the murder – both of the women had several people willing to vouch they were where they'd said they were and Mr. Lazlo was at a quodpot team practice. They talked a little about whether they would do any further investigation into the family, but never came to any solid conclusions.

Ron and his two friends met up the next morning to brainstorm over breakfast about any magical options they might be overlooking because they were so focused on the muggle team's suggestions. The end result was only that the three of them were a little later than normal getting in to the office. They walked in to find Charlie Rhodes waiting for them. The man was obviously quite nervous, but had apparently decided to turn himself in and tell them his story. If it had been up to Ron, they'd have gone ahead and questioned the man right then, but both Harry and Hermione objected that they should wait for the muggle detectives to arrive. Sure, they were the experts, but it wasn't like he and his friends were incompetent, for Merlin's sake. And Ron was quite frankly getting tired of how much time had been taken up by so little progress on this case.

Hermione had taken it upon herself to try and attempt to make a two-way mirror with magic between the rooms that they had been using during their less-than-productive time the day before. As usual, she had quickly come up with exactly what she was attempting, which meant that all of them had the chance to listen in on the questioning of Charlie Rhodes. Hermione ended up being the one going in with Detective Beckett and her partner – he'd been chatting and laughing with Hermione _again_ while the detective stared in at Rhodes – and the rest of them stayed in the main room, watching.

Ron was a little surprised that the detective immediately cut to the heart of the matter by asking, "Who were you dosing with love potion, Charlie?"

While the man stuttered and stumbled over his own words, the author added, "It was Janna, wasn't it."

"No! Why would you think?" The man looked pretty bewildered, and then took a deep breath to finally talk. "Janna would never - ! Janna was part of the whole thing!"

"Alright, Charlie. Just take a moment, and tell us exactly what the three of you were into," Beckett said. Ron was impressed with how empathetic she managed to sound, despite himself. It wasn't really that he didn't like the detectives, or appreciate them, he was just frustrated.

"The three of us, we were, we were friends – at school, and after. Janna and I started dating, we were in love. And it went well between us - for a while," he took another deep breath and another pause. "But my parents didn't approve of her. Her family wasn't prestigious enough. Sara had a similar problem with her parents, they wanted her to get married and she wanted to work on her reputation as a potion's brewer, open up her own shop. So Janna and I pretended to break up, and Sara and I started to pretend we were going out. We didn't really think it through, I guess. I mean, obviously we couldn't pretend forever, right?"

Beckett made an agreeable noise, to prompt him to continue when he stopped and looked up at those in the room with him. When that didn't seem to be quite enough, she asked him again to explain what had happened.

"Janna and I, we wanted to get married, eventually, but we didn't know how we could manage it. Then Janna got this idea. What if my family suffered through such a huge scandal that my parents would be the ones who weren't good enough for their friends? No one could fault Sara for 'dumping' me and no one could fault me for making any match I could manage. We didn't think anyone would get hurt! That's why we chose the plan we did, it was just love potion!"

"Ha!" Ron said softly to himself. Just love potion indeed. Bloody dangerous stuff. Harry gave him a sympathetic look, but the two detectives in the room with them just looked intrigued. Too bad; Ron wasn't telling that story for anything.

"Who did you give the love potion to?" Castle's voice from the other room interjected itself into Ron's thoughts.

"My cousin Alice. We never got along, and she always put on airs about the _prestige of the family, _and other nonsense like that," he said mockingly. "Stupid cow always thought I liked her more than I did, so when I suggested we should get together to talk about family stuff - it was easy to feed her the potion. Some of those potions, they focus on the first person you see, but we were careful to pick one that we could give a specific target to. It worked, right at first. Alice ended up desperately infatuated with a terribly disgraceful wizard by the name of Argus Plott, who was just plain desperate. They both worked at the Ministry, but far enough apart that it could seem possible they'd just met up and hit it off."

"We were well on our way, you see? Alice had declared to the family, and they were all horrified, trying to cover it up or get her to change her mind. It didn't occur to anybody to make her stop visiting me, though, and I just kept giving her the potion. Janna thought we should go all the way and let her marry the guy. But Sara, well, Sara started to feel bad about it. She said we'd done more than enough, and she wanted out."

"And that's why you killed her," Beckett stated coldly.

"No! I wouldn't! We wouldn't! Sure, I didn't agree. I tried to talk to her, tell her that it would be too obvious that it'd been magical if Alice suddenly changed her mind so soon. It just made her more obstinate. She said if I didn't stop right away, she'd go and tell my family herself. I was angry, yes, but I wouldn't have killed her! I mean – Andrew said you'd found the letter. I was talking about Alice!"

"Wait, what?" Castle asked, "your cousin is also dead?"

"No! She just got sent to live with a different part of the family in disgrace. Look, Sara didn't tell on us. She gave me an ultimatum but before I could say anything, I got an owl from my parents saying I'd been disowned! I don't know if Alice figured out I was dosing her or what, but she apparently had agreed to the meetings to spy on _me!_ She found some of Janna's stuff at my place, and told them we'd never broken up! Getting rid of Sara wouldn't have done me any good."

"So why did you smash up all the pictures of her in your apartment? Why did you run, Charlie?" Beckett asked, leaning forward over the table that separated them.

"The pictures, they were all posed of us as a couple, for my parents. It wasn't real, and I was so mad that Alice had spoiled everything. I ran because I panicked. Sara and I were fighting, and you thought I was her boyfriend, and the thing with the potions wasn't exactly legal and I just, I freaked out and I ran."

Ron was a little surprised when Beckett's first words, about ten minutes later, were, "I believe him." There hadn't been any indication of that in the room that he could see. The detective's demeanor had remained aloof and disbelieving, even as she asked him for an alibi and more information about his family and his ex-girlfriend. She'd also asked him about the missing necklace, and he'd been just as surprised as the roommate that it had disappeared.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: Rick Castle and the Victim's Loss

* * *

Hermione Granger was by far the easiest of the auror trio to talk to. If he was ever going to manage to get more information about the wizard's world as a whole, or the auror team's mysterious past in particular, he figured he'd get it out of Hermione. Sure, Beckett might think he had a short attention span, and he wasn't above reinforcing that impression, but he knew how to hold out for the good stuff when it was necessary.

In the meantime this case was, in what he figured was by now his own fairly experienced opinion, pretty interesting. Even if their pool of suspects kept fluctuating wildly. Yesterday, he'd been sure it was the boyfriend-who-wasn't-a-boyfriend-after-all. Then Rhodes had come out with that crazy story of disapproving families and love potions used as revenge. It was bizarre enough to be something he would make up, but the man had seemed genuine, even Beckett agreed about that.

Now that left them with questions about Janna, Rhodes' family - especially the now-absent cousin, and the not quite dismissed suspicions about the Laslos. One of the things that was both simultaneously neat and also a bit disturbing about the aurors was that they didn't need the kinds of authorization the police did before searching people's homes. It was taking a bit of mental adjusting for the rest of them to really grasp, but Beckett had caved and agreed to the team searching the Lazlo house for the necklace. In their world, finding the family denying all knowledge of the item deeply suspicious just wasn't enough for a warrant, when nothing else pointed their way. For the wizards, things like that just didn't matter. If an auror wanted to search someone's house or office, they just did it. Potter and Weasley had volunteered for the job of doing the searching, which left the four of their team and Hermione Granger back at the office staring at Beckett's list of potential suspects on the board.

Castle assumed that their next step was going to be talking to the Rhodes family. The cousin and the parents in particular, after hearing the story that Charlie had told them. They'd need to try and confirm his story and see if they couldn't figure out a little bit more about just who may have known about this whole bizarre scheme and suspected Sara's involvement. However, when he suggested this to Beckett, who was staring at the board with that intent look she got, she said no.

Glancing at his taken aback expression, she explained. "We're getting too distracted by the details of the story and the suspects. This isn't about the potion or the blackmail, not directly," she held up a hand when he started to object, "It's about Sara. There were three of them involved in this scheme, so if it is the reason she's dead, why was it Sara that was murdered and not the other two? What is it that makes her most important to get rid of?" The detective was half talking to herself by this point, which was not unusual at all. Castle knew it to be a fairly good sign for when she was really starting to figure things out, in fact. After a few more moments contemplation of the board, Beckett turned back to him and said, "We need to figure out why Sara changed her mind about providing the potion, and why, if Charlie Rhodes' story is true, she had a whole new cauldron full of it bubbling away when she died."

While Castle was mentally berating himself for getting so distracted by the craziness of the magical case to not notice the importance of those questions himself, Hermione jumped into the conversation. "Do you have any idea how to do that, detective? We've already talked to her family and her roommate and they claimed nothing had recently changed with her and she wasn't acting strangely or anything like that."

Beckett sighed and bit her lip. "I know, but that's the real key here. It was something about Sara that got Sara killed. Charlie and Janna are both still … fine," and suddenly, she was decisive-Beckett again. "The threatening note we got from the roommate. The note could definitely explain her suddenly backing out of their plans. We thought it was from Charlie or Janna, but they were both in on the whole thing. Someone else definitely knew about the scheme and blamed Sara specifically. Who though?" She stood, looking as if she was expecting the board to give her answers at any moment, but shook her head at her own thoughts. "We need to talk to Janna first, see if their stories match up. I don't think Rhodes is lying, but we shouldn't assume that, or that he didn't leave something important out. Maybe Sara said something to Janna she didn't tell Charlie."

So they sent out an owl, or at least the aurors did – he was so tempted to ask the wizards if he could get one of those! - requesting Janna's presence, and the woman turned up within a couple of hours, saying that she knew that they'd be wanting to talk to her after she'd heard about the investigation from Charlie. Considering that she told them up front that she'd already conferred with their other witness, it wasn't surprising that the stories of the two matched up when she told them her recollection of events.

They tried to ask her if she had any further idea why Sara had suddenly changed her mind about their scheme, or even if she could tell them when exactly the change had occurred, but she said she really didn't know. Janna had been friends with the both of them, but because of the ruse that Sara and Charlie were dating, Janna said she and Sara hadn't actually spent time together one-on-one in a more than a year. At that point Beckett went ahead and showed her the note and asked if she'd gotten anything similar, or if Sara had mentioned anything at all that might have been in reference to it. She claimed not, though from the way Beckett repeated the question Castle wasn't sure she believed her. The writer thought she seemed fairly unnerved when Beckett showed it to her, but then learning your murdered partner in crime was getting disturbing anonymous notes probably wouldn't sit well with anybody.

It hadn't been at all what they'd hoped for from the interview, but they finally ended up letting Jana leave. It was clear they weren't going to get anything out of her that they hadn't already heard from Charlie. Beckett reluctantly declared that they were going to have to call all of Sara's friends back in and try to ask them about the love potion and the note, and hope to catch someone obviously lying.

They were just about to get to organizing the mass of re-interviews when Potter and Weasley returned from their search, looking pleased, and accompanied by Ashley Laslo. Weasley took the young woman into the adjoining room they had been using for interrogations, and Potter silently placed the missing necklace on the table after entering their working room. It was kind of awesome, really. Castle had all but forgotten about the ongoing search involving the disinherited relatives in the face of remembered blackmail and was internally bemused at just how many enemies this poor girl seemed to have accumulated.

Laslo was not particularly willing to be forthcoming, and since they were only investigating a single murder, the use of the potion, veritaserum, they had used in the last case would not be authorized for anything short of a trial, according to the three aurors. Beckett let Esposito and Ryan take the lead with questioning her and they tried asking her a number of things, but she remained obstinately silent. Castle was fairly sure she wouldn't have talked on her own initiative, but after realizing they were getting nowhere, Potter took a leaf out of Beckett's book and threatened that simply possessing the necklace would be enough of a crime to get her kicked out of the apprenticeship she was currently serving. Castle was strangely proud of how the auror team was coming along through learning from his - Beckett's team. Even better, that was finally enough to shake the girl.

After the first interviews they had done, Ryan and Esposito had told the group they although they acted a bit suspicious, neither of the detectives really got the gut feeling that any of the Laslo family had been actively involved in Sara's murder. On top of the claim made by the aurors that wizards just didn't hire other wizards to kill their enemies, Castle hadn't really figured the Laslos would turn out to be involved and Beckett had clearly felt the same. According to Ashley's story, they were still right about that.

She admitted they had lied before about not knowing about the missing pendant and that it was originally destined for their family. As much residual anger as they had for the Kleins from the incident years ago, however, the girl insisted that none of her family would sink so low as to murder anyone over it or even to steal the pendant. A week ago, she had gotten an unsigned owl, suggesting that the author was planning to acquire the pendant from Sara shortly and asking how much it was worth to the Laslos.

Ashley had thought it was supremely strange that Sara Klein would be willing to give up the heirloom for any reason, but had nonetheless replied, just in case the inquiry was genuine. Although she had some knowledge of the Klein family, it was limited. She'd assumed it wasn't impossible that they'd fallen on hard times but were keeping it quiet - or even that only Sara herself was having serious financial problems she didn't want anyone to know about. So Ashley had sent a return message using the same owl and met with a hooded stranger in the bar on the bottom floor of The Grim Inn. She'd exchanged a sack of galleons for the necklace the afternoon Sara Klein had been murdered. Ashley insisted that she could not identify anything about the stranger and that she had not heard about the murder until contacted by the auror office. She also said she couldn't produce the messages she'd received as she'd been instructed to burn them after she'd gotten the necklace.

It was not going to rank amongst the most believable stories that Castle had ever heard out of a suspect. Quite far from it, as a matter of fact. Yet the girl was obviously very upset, and he really didn't get the impression she was lying. Sure, his abilities in that department still weren't quite up to par with that of the detectives he worked with - yet! - but they agreed with him, too. It also didn't hurt that they had nothing else besides the necklace to tie her to Sara's death and she did have a very solid alibi.

Even with a great deal of further prompting on the subject of the person she'd met up with, Ashley couldn't seem to give them anything more than probably male and an estimate of height. Once the three aurors explained just how many ways there were to change one's appearance with magic, they finally let her go despite the uselessness of that description. Sure it was inconvenient to their investigation, but glamour spells? Polyjuice potion? Magic. Was. So. _Awesome_! Why couldn't he have been born a wizard? It just wasn't fair. Ah well, he supposed being _only_ a ruggedly handsome author wasn't too bad.

The necklace, like everything else connected to the case, was sent off for processing with Lanie in the labs. Likewise, Beckett had made a point of getting Jana to handle a witness statement, and that was sent off as well, for comparison purposes to the unknown prints they'd been able to distinguish on the note.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: Hermione Granger and the Blackmailer Revealed

* * *

Hermione found herself unsure if she liked this case or not. It was true that she enjoyed the investigative work the detectives did and were trying to help Hermione's group integrate into the aurors. However, this case seemed to keep going off on tangents every other day or so. It seemed so strange to her, and what seemed even stranger was that it seemed perfectly normal to the detectives. When she asked Mr. Castle about it, he gleefully said that most of their cases were complicated ones, and even told her several stories that were far more convoluted than what they had been through in this investigation.

She'd been a little disappointed when Detective Beckett had declared that the detectives were going to redo all the interviews that she and her team had conducted before they were brought in. Hermione didn't like feeling as if she had failed at something. It was a little embarrassing that this seemed to be evident to the Beckett, too. The detective made a special point of reassuring Hermione that she often re-interviewed witnesses on a case after she knew more about what to ask them.

Going back over very similar ground with people they'd already talked to wasn't particularly interesting to Hermione. She did her best not to seem bored by it though, and doubted the detectives realized. The main difference was that when confronted with the fact that the detectives knew that Sara and Charlie weren't really dating, all the woman's friends grudgingly admitted to their own knowledge of the falsity of the relationship – with one exception.

Elise Maulkin, Sara's roommate, was not in on the ruse. She was under the impression that Charlie and Sara were actually dating and was shocked by the assertion of the detectives that it was all a set up to appease Sara's parents. They tried to figure out a good reason for Elise to have been left out, but it was a mystery. Elise had no particular contact with Sara's parents, so hadn't been left out because she might have told on them. The two girls were roommates, business partners, and friends who normally shared details of their lives with each other. It really didn't make sense that Elise would have been lied to - at least not in a way any of them could figure out.

It made them curious, but Elise was the only friend who wasn't under the impression that the whole thing was a sham. There had been a hope that if there was another friend out of the loop, they might be able to figure out why from some shared similarity, but they were left only with the interviews with her family. Beckett did not outright tell the family about the story they'd been told, instead she simply asked them to tell her more about the relationship between Charlie and Sara.

Despite sinking hopes for answers, that did yield some interesting information after all. The impression they'd gotten from Charlie and Janna was that their plan with the love potion was almost complete and that they had already been starting on the fake relationship between Charlie and Sara becoming distant. The letters they'd found in Sara's apartment talking about fights bore that out as well. Yet that was not the impression the family had – which wasn't so unexpected, since Charlie had told them they had not gone so far as to break up yet and the family had admitted from the beginning that their contact with Sara was somewhat irregular. The engagement ring Sara had shown her sister, on the other hand? That was new, and had made Detective Beckett's writer partner make a bizarrely high-pitched little gasping noise of surprise.

It was also interesting because they hadn't come across any such item, and no one else had been told about it – including Sara's parents and the roommate. Beckett wanted to have the sister describe the ring and have someone draw up a sketch, but Harry explained about legilimancy and pensieves and went to the head of the department to talk about someone obtaining the girl's memory of the item. While Harry had eventually learned enough occlumency to block his own mind, he wasn't enough of an expert in the mind magics where he was supposed to be using legilimancy on others.

Once they'd been back through everyone else, and were mostly done for the day, Beckett gathered them all together in front of her board again. "Is there any way to find this mystery ring with magic?"

Harry shook his head. "If we were in the same room with it and the ring wasn't warded to be hidden, maybe. It's much harder to call an object you don't know the exact location of. It could also be dangerous, depending on what's between you and it. We can go and try her apartment again, if you want?"

"We need to find that ring, and we need to talk to Charlie Rhodes again."

Since it was getting late, it was the next day when Harry took Ryan and Esposito to look for the ring in Sara's apartment, while Beckett indicated the rest of them were going to see Rhodes at his place. They'd be asking him a few pointed questions and also looking for the ring in his possession. They'd since managed to get a pensieve so that everyone could see the sister's memory of the ring and know what they were looking for.

When confronted with the idea of him having recently proposed to Sara, Charlie lapsed into sputtering incoherence. He vehemently denied that any such thing had happened and professed his love for Janna quite emphatically. Hermione had never actually seen anyone under the influence of a powerful love potion, but exchanging a look with Ron, she realized they were both having the same suspicion.

Catching Beckett's eye, Hermione began asking him more questions about his relationship with Janna, and he mentioned that he and Janna were planning on moving in together and that she had already started moving her things in. Charlie was just finally starting to wind down about all the things that were wonderful about Janna when Ron, who had left the room at the mention of Janna's things, came back in.

"Found it," he said, holding up a ring between his fingers. It was definitely the same one they'd all just seen in the memory of Sara's sister.

They took Charlie with them, despite his bewildered protests that the ring was a family heirloom from his grandmother and that he'd certainly never proposed to Sara with it. He said he'd been planning on giving it to Janna, but that it should have still been in his personal vault. With the man back at the Auror Office, set aside in the room they'd been using for questioning people – Castle said that the detectives called the one at their own precinct 'the box' – the four of them settled into the room on the other side to await the return of the other half of their team. As soon as the ring had been found, Hermione had sent off a patronus to tell them to call off their search.

"It wasn't him," the author asserted.

"I agree," Beckett said, but then continued, looking a bit disturbed. "It's obvious he's under the influence of something now compared to before. Love potions," the detective paused to shake her head. "Though I still don't understand what happened yet. Did he propose? How could he not remember? If the ring is supposed to be in his vault, how did anybody end up with it?"

Memory charms, it has to be," Hermione interjected. "People are very suggestible after having their memories removed. What I don't get is why Janna kept the ring but didn't tell him he'd already proposed to her?"

"Hey! Didn't I say it was the ex-girlfriend?" Castle piped up suddenly, in a gleeful tone.

"Sure, Castle, and if you'd had any proof at all, I'd have listened," the detective replied.

It was about then that Harry and the two detectives returned. "Aw, it was Charlie?" Ryan asked, as they walked in and saw the man sitting in the room.

"Actually, we think it was his ex-girlfriend. Our friend Charlie has some suspicious memory lapses and is a little too effusive about how wonderful Janna is."

"So we going out to get her or getting her to come to us?" Esposito asked practically.

It took another day, all told. They convinced Janna to come in, saying that they suspected Charlie and were holding him. As expected, she came quickly in an attempt to convince them that her boyfriend had to be innocent. When they confronted her with the ring, she denied she had seen it before, but even Hermione could tell before Beckett said anything that the woman was lying.

After they told her that Hermione was in the process of brewing an antidote to Amortentia as they spoke and mentioned they had fingerprints on the note they'd be comparing with hers, she gave in. So far as it went, the story that she and Charlie had told was true up to a point. Except that while Sara and Charlie were spending so much time together, they got closer to each other than ever before, while Janna and Charlie started to fall apart.

Janna didn't realize things had shifted so much between her friends until they became uncomfortable with what they were doing and told her together that they wanted it all to end. They said they'd hung on to their dosing scheme long after they should have come clean because they just didn't see a good way to end the whole thing without anyone getting hurt. They had finally agreed it had to end, and Charlie had proposed to Sara. He had wanted to keep it a secret until things with his cousin were entirely resolved, but Sara wasn't comfortable with that. She had demanded he go ahead and break up with Janna to resolve at least one of their problems.

When he'd tried to break things off with her, Janna had been incensed. The two of them had been together for years and planning how to stay together nearly as long, and he was going to give it all up for Sara? Sara who he'd suggested for their scheme because he swore there was never anything but friendship between them? She'd pretended to be only mildly upset when it was the three of them, but afterwards she'd followed Charlie home to remind him how good they'd been together. When he refused to listen, she'd snapped and cast an Unforgivable. While he was docile under the Imperius Curse, she could take control of his remaining stash of potions and do a few selective memory charms at her leisure.

Janna had then tried to get Sara to back off. She'd planted suggestions in Charlie to get him to fight with Sara and break things off with her and she had sent the threatening letter anonymously to Sara, demanding more potion and hoping that the woman would assume that it was from the cousin or some other member of Charlie's family. As set as Sara had always been on wanting to be a professional brewer, she had been sure the threat of having her license pulled for disseminating the semi-legal potion would be enough. She had backed off for a while, but ultimately it hadn't worked. Sara refused to leave Charlie alone, and Janna couldn't have that.

Worried about Sara getting rid of the evidence of her own wrongdoing and investigating Charlie's change in attitude, Janna had taken a chance, knowing that Janna spent her lunch hour alone in the shop where she worked. She'd hoped to make it look like a robbery, but hadn't realized that the paranoia of the owner had extended to spells on the register that were far too complicated for Janna to crack in just a few minutes. Remembering something Sara had said a few years ago about a family dispute, she had taken Sara's necklace in the hope it would be a sufficiently obvious clue to point the aurors towards someone else. The Laslo family had been all too happy to take it off her hands.

Hermione caught the detective's eye for permission before asking a question that had been bothering her a bit. "Why a knife?"

Janna explained that she'd been greatly worried after the fact about having traces of one Unforgiveable on her wand already. She'd hoped that transfiguring a knife instead would make it seem more like something done by a crazed robber, and it would be a lot less suspicious to have cast that innocuous spell if anyone looked into her because of her relationship with Sara.

Asked why there had been the confusion over the ring, the woman looked quite disgruntled. She hadn't been able to risk letting Charlie get questioned by aurors under Imperious, so she'd had to loosen his leash a bit to let him come in to answer questions. She'd made sure he wouldn't remember falling in love with Sara and dumping her, but Charlie's upset over the death had been severe enough to make him hard to control. By the time she'd resorted to using the leftover _Amortentia_, she'd erased enough memories to have lost track of a few details.

When they finished with Janna, Beckett said she only had one lingering question. "Why was Sara still brewing the potion? Surely she wasn't going to try dosing him herself?"

Hermione thought about it for a moment, biting her lip. Finally, she said, "Well, antidotes are a complex subject. Some potions need a very specific reversal agent, some need to be tailored to the subject, and others can be reversed by a number of antidotes. A few of them begin with a brewing of the base potion. Sara might have been trying to formulate some kind of preventative brew, starting from there. I'm not sure if _Amortentia_ is one of the potions where that would work, I could look it up?"

Beckett shook her head. "If you think you need to. It seems reasonable enough to me. At least as much as anything else about magic does."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten: Kate Beckett and the Wrap Up (Epilogue)

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Kate really hadn't been thrilled when they'd ended up on another case with the team of aurors. She liked them well enough, but she was used to being in charge and in control with every aspect of her investigations. Adding magic made that completely impossible when she knew almost nothing about it.

It had turned out a lot better than the last one, though. They'd been able to get more involved with the aurors' portion of the investigation, and to actually investigate the scenes and people involved in person. There also wasn't the mounting frustration of additional murders taking place while their investigation drug on. That had really been the worst part on the last one, feeling so helpless to stop it all.

One thing she did have to admit, if only to herself, was that it was nice to not be stuck with the paperwork once the case was done. She got a bit of a taste of why Castle sometimes stuck around when they were just filling out forms – it was kind of fun to just hang out with the team and not be the one having to do the work. Of course, Kate was too professional to keep trying to distract the three aurors from their work like her writer was, but it was still enjoyable.

Partway through filling out yet another form, Granger had huffed and looked up at her. "Do all your cases end this suddenly? I mean, it seems like we were in the middle of things and now all of a sudden it's just over."

The other two aurors looked up in interest, obviously feeling much the same way. "Sometimes. Certain cases gradually build on themselves, but with some of them, you just hit one piece of evidence and suddenly everything snaps into place."

"That's always my favorite part!" Castle exclaimed, and then continued talking when no one else seemed inclined to say anything. "It's such a rush when you suddenly figure out how everything just fits. Definitely much better in real life than when you just make it up yourself."

After they'd gotten all the forms filed and reports written, the trio took the four of them back out into the magical district outside the Ministry building. They took a little time to look at things that caught their eyes in the shop windows they passed, and the three of them answered quite a few questions about magic. Enough of them that the detectives even got to ask a few in between all of Castle's.

Eventually, they all ended up at a little tavern restaurant to have dinner together, celebrating the end of the case they'd just wrapped up. It was a little weird, even after spending the afternoon out amongst the shops and the wizards frequenting them, to see the glasses and plates cleaning themselves, or to have the food appear on the tables with no assistance from a server. Not in a bad way, but even after all the floating memos and offhanded spells they'd seen during the investigation, it was still new enough to draw her attention throughout their evening. It would take a lot more exposure than they'd had so far for Beckett to get used to such blatant magic.

While they were eating, the aurors told them a little bit more about the cases that they'd normally take, and Beckett could understand anew why they needed the assistance of her team. Apparently, complicated crimes were just not the norm in the wizarding world, and the few times when such things happened, they were as likely to end up unsolved as not.

That was daunting, but it did make her feel a little bit more sure that it was worth putting up with all the strangeness and the stresses of working with them, to make sure that more criminals were getting caught. If nothing else, the more they'd worked with the three, the more they'd understood how the detectives worked and that should help them in general on all their cases, even if Beckett's team wasn't called in. Certainly she got the impression that aurors went through a fair amount of training, but from what the three had said, it seemed to nearly all deal with apprehending suspects and only occasionally with tracking and actual investigation only as an afterthought.

The idea of being called back to work with the NYAO wizards again on further cases no longer brought on the feeling of dread that it had when this latest case had started. If it happened, it happened. In the meantime, she wished the trio of aurors the best of luck with their other cases and would be glad to get back to her own place at the 12th precinct with slightly more mundane murders.

She may be the one who liked the weird ones, but Kate would much prefer her strain of weird to only include authors with crazy conspiracy theories and oddly placed bodies, not magic. It just wasn't her area of expertise, and she'd be happy enough to relinquish it, at least for a while. Though she couldn't help but be a little curious if there were perhaps some of those unsolved cases the aurors referred to in their records system that might be a little more solvable with the help of her team of detectives. She wasn't quite eager enough to help to actually say anything, though. Her own regular caseload and the 12th's store of cold cases was more than enough to keep her busy without worrying about someone else's.

Still, maybe she'd suggest to the three of them that they should look into it if they had the time. What could it hurt?

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A/N: I had someone comment on the last fic that I should really try to incorporate more Castle-type humor. I agreed it was something I was missing. So, I tried... and I gave up. Funny is one of those things that looks painfully easy – until you try to do it! Hopefully this was somewhat enjoyable anyway, and I greatly appreciate everyone taking the time to read, especially those who sent up an alert, favorite, review, etc. I have thoughts on a (sequel) sequel, but I've gotten no further than thoughts, so it may never be written and it won't be any time particularly soon if it is.


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